Workforce Management
It’s easy to monitor your employee’s working time simply by introducing a workforce (job costing) management solution.
Clocking terminals integrated with HR software ensure reliable monitoring of your workforce's attendance time, absences and various activities. This allows you to achieve a balance between adhering to legal responsibilities, company performance and workforce satisfaction.
Workforce Management, what’s it all about?
Workforce Management (or WFM) encompasses all the processes involved in scrutinising and checking working time within a business or corporation. The goal is to accurately establish the payroll variables needed to prepare paycheques at the end of each month, including the hours worked, overtime, leave taken, or any absences.
WFM is often considered the same as staff attendance. However, it actually incorporates all the processes involved in a company’s working time management such as monitoring time at work, absence control, hourly scheduling and supervising overtime.
Likewise, the term 'Workforce Management' is often used to refer to HR software packages that allow the complete scrutinising of your employee’s working time and absence.
What is the aim of Workforce Management?
There are principally two objectives:
- Firstly, it incorporates collection, monitoring and calculation of working time for all your workforce
- Secondly, it lets you to monitor working time by analysis into specific activities, departments, assignments or any other factors
WFM is much more than just time and attendance monitoring. Systems have progressed to optimise human resources using specific tools for planning support, activity profit analysis and absence management.
Time and attendance management is now a major issue for Human Resources. It allows a business to comply with its legal responsibilities and at the same time to streamline the management of its staff. The goal is to both gain efficiencies and to support well-being of personnel.
What are the features offered by workforce management solutions?
The standard features contained in Workforce Management solutions include:
- Attendance monitoring of employees: clocking in/out, overtime, shiftwork
- Managing of absences and leave: Time off in lieu (TOIL), absence authorisation
- Managing breaks and rest times
- Schedule management and planning subject to limitations
- Working time annualisation
- Job costing (analysis of time spent on specific activities or ventures)
- Supervising individual time and attendance accounts, with each staff member having access to an HR portal
- Working time declaration, using a clocking terminal or a Hourly clocking or working time declaration, via a clocking terminal or a virtual clocking system (workstation, smartphone, tablet).
The more advanced WFM systems, such as Kelio, offer many additional features including:
- Attendance declarations for staff on a fixed daily rate
- Monitoring remote work analysed by individual and by shift
- Management of support hours by employee representatives
- Management of business leave
- Advanced analysis of leave acquired bonuses and time off in lieu.
Workforce costing is usually only one part of HR management software packages, and these often incorporate onboarding and offboarding, training, job designation and expertise, expenses, skill management, HR documentation storage.
Installing an integrated WFM system allows you to digitise many of the HR processes, involving managers and HR administrators within the organisation, and may encompass approval stages.
Who benefits most from Workforce management?
Workforce or job costing management is beneficial for a whole range of organisations, irrespective of the size of their workforce or their commercial activity. Private and public organisations, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and multinationals are all required to monitor and record working times.
But in addition to monitoring 'working time’, analysis of time spent per activity is particularly valuable, especially when scrutinising profitability or for invoicing for the following organisations:
- Industrial corporations
- Consultancy firms
- Design offices
- Personal care providers.
Is job costing management useful and why should I implement a workforce management system??
Management of time and activities offers numerous advantages. There are usually five objectives when an organisation installs a workforce management solution:
Ensuring that HR complies with labour legislation:
- Respecting rest times
- Maintaining overtime quota limits
- Monitoring working times automatically and generating alerts if breached
- Checking for changes in legislation and/or updates.
Ensuring secure collection of working time data:
- Reliably calculate payroll variables and eliminate errors
- No more duplicate manual data entry. Payroll variables extracted and transferred directly from a central database
- One centralised tool makes it easier to manage different types of contracts or collective agreements.
Simplify daily human resources management:
- Management of administrative tasks and HR processes is digitised, so no need for paper records
- All information is centralised
- Data can be viewed or shared in real time.
Analyse activity monitoring:
- Analysis of working times according to activity, task, cost centre, customer or any other key factor
- Creation of tables and reports analysing performance.
Optimise quality of life at work:
- Ensure that all information that builds all staff member’s trust in their management and in the organisation’s HR is shared and distributed
- All personnel can consult their personal accounts and manage their own HR processes
- Staff scheduling assistance tools to enhance shift management
- Improves social harmony within the organisation by fairer distribution of responsibilities and working time
- Enhancement of workers loyalty.
I want more information on Kelio Workforce Management software
Who are the principal users of time and activity monitoring?
Workforce management involves all employees within an organisation. It is one of the few tools that everyone uses, irrespective of their role or responsibility.
All staff utilise time management systems to:
- Record or declare attendance times
- Register the amount of time spent on specific activities
- Consult schedules
- Generate leave requests or notify a planned absence
- Consult their personal accounts, employee record or other HR documents
- Transfer holiday balances or undertake other HR processes.
All workers can access the workforce management system using an HR portal to achieve this. Often referred to as HR self-service, employee portal or employee screen, it is a module in the system devoted to each employee that takes them through all the time management processes. Access can be via a clocking terminal, PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet, which allows employees to interact even when away from the premises.
For managers workforce management tools help to:
- Monitor employee’s attendance and absences
- Generate work plans and schedules
- Monitor job centre activity
- Authorise leave requests if in accordance with shift schedule overviews
- Receive alerts if anomalies arise following late clocking, unexpected absence or arranged overtime is exceeded.
For HR administrators and the heads of organisations, workforce management solutions make tasks easier particularly when:
- Scrutinising working times within the organisation
- Checking various analyses, productivity and profitability
- Assessing leave allowances, bonuses, personal time accounts
- Payroll calculation
Four lesser-known yet essential criteria when choosing a workforce management solution?
It is imperative to select a reliable and effective workforce management system, especially considering that it will serve your organisation for a long time and will involve all your staff.
The principal criteria for selection relate to the actual software functions and options. However, there are four supplementary criteria that are also key when selecting a workforce management tool:
- The ability of the solution to be set up and meet your inherent management systems. Notwithstanding size, every organisation has its own legal framework and practices (collective agreements, branch or organisation agreements, etc.). The system must therefore have the capacity and flexibility to adapt to your organisation and any changes that may occur in future. The selected solution must therefore permit your HR administrators to modify, adapt and manage it to meet your requirements to ensure reliable data retrieval over time.
- Ergonomics: time and attendance management is a system that involves the whole workforce at every level. To ensure the system runs smoothly, it’s critical that the user experience for employees and managers must be very favourable. It must be simple and practical to operate to ensure all staff buy into the chosen solution.
- The ability of the solution to integrate both with other systems such as Payroll and ERP and to be fully compatible with your existing IT system is essential for enhancing the administration of your organisation.
- Associated services: there are many aspects of new software that require effective operational support, including audit, feature selection, setup and deployment, training and a helpdesk. A workforce management system is an important investment, so you should be able to call on the expertise of support services that fully understand the systems and ensure the system runs flawlessly.
Implementing an efficient and practical T&A management solution?
There are several critical steps to consider when implementing a WFM management system. It is imperative that you follow them so you can experience all the benefits it offers.
1: Allocate sufficient time to identify your requirements.
Start with the basics. Before even start considering which system to install, you must determine exactly what you need and expect from a workforce management system.
The following questions will help you with this preliminary stage:
- Who will be using the WFM system? What is their role in your organisation? What do they actually need to do when the system is up and running?
- How do you organise working time within your organisation? Are there a range of different profiles and working times? Are there multiple agreements under which your organisation operates and must be considered?
- You already have other software and systems in place, so how will this system be integrated?
- Do you have people with the skills and knowledge to manage and scrutinise this project?
- What are the features that interest you the most?
- Which are the principal benefits you hope to gain from the solution? Saving time, reducing costs, enhancing quality of life at work, equality, etc.
This informative phase will help you to create an initial list of key requirements.
Remember to identify the challenges, obstacles and risks that are linked to this project.
Once you have established the specifications, you can then proceed but take note of any sensitive areas and risks that could jeopardise the implementation of the workforce management system for your organisation. For example, if you are not cognisant of the working time regulations that apply to one of your organisation’s agreements, it could lead not only errors but could also create major legal risks.
2: Select a tool that is adaptable, flexible and powerful.
Many companies fail to take the time to undertake initial research, which may mean they end up with a tool and service provider that fails to match their profile or fully meet their expectations.
Don’t hesitate to ask your potential service providers about the day-to-day use of their solution and all the features it offers. Request a demonstration of any particular cases that provide a solution your individual requirements.
Kelio teams are always available and happy to suggest our solutions, as well as undertake customised demonstrations and answer all your questions.
Take time out to get to know the service teams really well and the support services offered by the providers.
The technical features of workforce management software are central to your decision-making process, but they are not the only factors to consider when selecting a solution.
If you cannot expect the right support from customer services, a management tool will be of little use to you, no matter how powerful it seems. You therefore need to meet the teams that will support you once the system is up and running. Check their response times and availability, ascertain which communication channels they use, ask for examples of satisfied clients, and which services are included in your service contract (onsite or remote assistance, software updates, troubleshooting service).
3: Allocate the necessary time and resources to set up your tool.
It’s not easy to install and set up WFM software so the HR teams might find it challenging, but it is key to the success of your assignment. It is critical that you seek the support of the developer of the software solution during this critical phase to ensure value for money.
Kelio have been supporting many organisations throughout Europe since 1987 with well-proven systems. We make sure that the system is set up to fully comply with the legislation and your company agreements, and we undertake a range of tests to ensure the results obtained fully meet your expectations. We also provide ongoing training on the use of the systems so you have the confidence to manage your WFM system on a daily basis.
4: Communicate with and provide support for the employees who will use the workforce management tool.
It is important that your HR teams take the initiative to promote and communicate the project internally to ensure all staff accept and buy into the concept.
We can recommend some effective procedures for getting your staff on board with a workforce management system:
- Assign a head of workforce management
- Instigate a change management process for all employees at every level
- Arrange demonstrations of the time and attendance solution
- Appoint employees to be ambassadors. They will not only test the established procedures but will also be responsible for training their colleagues
- Spread the news among the staff about the importance of the WFM system and the benefits they will experience such as their ability to interrogate their working times, autonomous leave requests, speedier validations, full transparency.
- Instigate and provide access to a Q&A workspace that is dedicated to the implementation of the workforce management system.
What’s the ROI of a WFM solution?
The return on investment of a workforce management solution is not as easy as calculations based on a specific formula. It actually depends on a wide range of parameters, such as the initial structure of the time monitoring (was it entirely paper-based or even partly digitised), the intricacy of the organisation (multiple sites, different site agreements, size of staff), or other attributes specific to the organisation.
From our experience the return on investment of a time and attendance management system for many organisations is quite rapid because it automates the time-consuming administrative tasks undertaken by HR and the managers.
- Centralised organisation with shared, up-to-the-minute campaigns
- Accurate monitoring of completed project times
- Real time alerts.
You will experience greater profitability from your WFM systems even after just a few months of use.
As well as the purely financial gains and time savings, you can expect may other benefits from optimising workforce management. Examples include an improved social environment, fairer work allocation, improvement to the quality of life at work, greater trust in the management, etc. These benefits allow HR administrators to dedicate their energies to more high-value tasks and on making the best use of human capital.
Kelio is designed to adapt to your specific requirements
After years of R&D and an investment of over five million euros, Kelio time and attendance and WFM solutions address all the essential criteria demanded by successful organisations. They will bring you anticipation, proficiency and effective reaction, as a result of their many features.
For more than 35 years, Kelio has developed innovative and professional solutions that are adapted to meet all your requirements, and this ethos will continue. Don’t procrastinate. Contact us now!
